


Poor Little Rich Girl

by Squishy_TRex



Category: Wild Things (1998)
Genre: AU, Coercion, Dubious Consent, F/F, Internalized Homophobia, Lesbian Character, Missing Scene, Multi, What-If, mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 15:59:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17046602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squishy_TRex/pseuds/Squishy_TRex
Summary: It figured that Kelly Van Ryan would find a way to survive a fatal shooting just so she could have the last word.





	Poor Little Rich Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [slinkhard (merrymelody)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrymelody/gifts).



> This is a "what if Kelly survived" scenario played out as a conversation between two characters. I'm just filling in some gaps and in my rewatch, I was fascinated in playing with Kelly's character.

“I didn’t kill Suzie Toller.”

Detective Gloria Perez had only just shut the door behind her when Kelly Van Ryan provided  the answer to the question on everyone’s mind since Blue Bay’s golden daughter returned to the land of the living. Whether it was, this time, the truthful answer remained to be seen. That was why Gloria was here, standing a few feet away from Kelly’s hospital bed, ignoring the advice of her superiors who desperately wanted this whole ordeal to finally be over and done with. But Gloria didn’t like leaving things unfinished so it was just her luck that Kelly Van Ryan, despite her mother’s protests, was more than willing to talk.

“You realize,” Gloria started, walking to the single chair at Kelly’s bedside and seated herself, “that I’m not inclined to believe you after everything that’s happened.”

Kelly shrugged, her hospital gown sliding down her shoulder. The points of her collarbone were sharp, perhaps sharper than they used to be, considering how long she’d been here.

“I know. But I guess by now you’ve figured out what actually did happen. Or most of it, anyway.” She smiled at Gloria, but with no teeth and none of it reaching her dull eyes. “All of us lied; it’s just that I’m really the only one who can benefit from finally telling the truth.”

Two bullet wounds to the chest, but the little Van Ryan girl seemed more unbreakable than ever. In another life, Gloria would have been impressed. Now, she just felt sorry for her.

Blowing out a sigh, Gloria pulled out her weathered notebook. “All right, where do you want to start?”

Kelly’s face dropped into an unreadable look – all hardened lines and vacant eyes – and her gaze seemed to go somewhere past Gloria’s, as if she were actually peering into an unseen door into the past.

“We should probably start with my dad.” Her eyes flicked back to catch Gloria’s. “You know the story? Read it in a police report or something?”

Her pen hovered over paper for a moment before she started writing. “Yes.” Gloria looked at her words without really seeing them.  

“He used his favorite revolver to do it,” Kelly said. “When I was younger, he showed me how to take care of all the guns he owned. He was careful about it too; made sure I know what each one was and how to use it and whatever. I watched him with each one and he handled that revolver like it was a baby.” She inhaled. “You know, it was me that found him.”

Gloria looked up, but said nothing. Kelly was still looking past her.

“I’m pretty sure it’s not in the report. My mother didn’t want me involved with any of it, probably has one of her deck hands written up instead. But it was me.” Her gaze suddenly came back to meet Gloria’s. “I’m betting you have no idea what it’s like for a girl to come home and find her father’s brains painted all over his study.”

Just for a second, Kelly’s face changed – mouth twisting, eyes glaring.

“It fucking sucks.”

“Was that when you started seeing Sam Lombardo?” Gloria asked, swallowing all the empathy that was starting to dredge up.

“Not like _that_ ,” Kelly responded, rolling her eyes. “Not yet, anyway.” She sighed, taking a moment to pull herself inward again, face emptying into the closest she could get to resembling a blank slate. It was then that Gloria realized Kelly was putting on a mask, hiding in an emotionless void like she hid behind her tears. Except this time, the mask was for her own benefit, not someone else’s.

“I didn’t really want to, but my mother was fucking hysterical about me seeing somebody about what happened. Just to talk about it or whatever, make sure I wasn’t crazy or going to do something stupid.” She gave a flicker of a droll smile. “Something that would make her look worse than her husband killing himself in the home her parents gave her.”

That gave Gloria pause.

“Your mother owned the house?”

“My mother owns over half of Blue Bay,” Kelly said snidely. “Daddy was rich, sure, but my mother? She’s-”

“Richer than God?” Gloria finished. Kelly met her eyes in a real smile before looking down at her hands, inspecting undoubtedly sub-par nailbeds.

“Anyway,” she continued. “I told her I’d see a shrink if I got to pick which one. That kind of pissed her off, but I didn’t want to say anything to some little fucking toadie with a bullshit degree she’d pay off to hear everything I wasn’t telling her.”

Kelly splayed her hands on her lap before leaning back against the pillow, gaze towards the ceiling.

“So I picked the nicest, safest person I could think of, the one guy everyone thought they could trust.”

“Sam Lombardo,” Gloria answered, not faltering in her writing.

Kelly kept going like she hadn’t heard. “My mother was more than fine with my choice; since they’d been fucking on and off for a while, she figured he’d just tell her whatever she wanted to know if she asked nicely enough.” She paused. “I didn’t find out about them fucking until later, by the way. It ended up coming out during one of the times he was fucking me.” She giggled at her own ribald joke.

Gloria sighed. “So you were initially seeing Sam Lombardo for counseling.”

“Yeah,” Kelly admitted. “And it really was counseling. All we did was talk about daddy. Not even how he died or how I found him or how unhappy he must have been, but the good stuff from before. Like how he taught me to swim at the beach when I was six and held my hand when I got my ears pierced and read to me in his study whenever I couldn’t sleep and would always pick me up from school when I said I felt sick, even when I was lying just so I didn’t have to be there anymore.”

The room was quiet for a moment. Looking at her – dulled blonde hair fanned around her solemn face, frail body bound in by the tight hospital sheets – Gloria could see what Kelly must have been like as a child; constricted by her family name and parents’ money, just looking for genuine parental affection. She shifted uncomfortably in the plastic chair.

“I loved my daddy more than anyone.” Kelly’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Then, just like that, he was gone.” Her mouth formed a grim line. “And he left me alone with her.” She spat the last word out like it was poison.

Repositioning herself, Kelly sat back up, wincing as she did so, with one hand fisted in the sheets.

Gloria straightened, alarmed. “Do you need a nurse?”

Kelly shook her head. “It’s fine.” She leaned back against what passed for a headboard. “It was so much worse a few weeks ago. Could barely breathe, even when I wasn’t moving.” Her sardonic smile returned. “My mother’s still looking for the piece of shit who put me here.”

“Ray Duquette was fired and left Blue Bay shortly afterward,” Gloria said, repeating the words she’d been saying to reporters, lawyers, and Sandra Van Ryan since Kelly made it through surgery. “We have no idea where he is and he hasn’t responded to any of our attempts to contact him.” She raised an eyebrow. “If you know anything…”

Snorting, Kelly fixed her with an unimpressed look. “If that asshole was a part of this whole shitshow, I didn’t know about it. My guess is that he and Sam had some sort of deal going and he’d get some of the money for killing me.” She mirrored Gloria’s expression. “But I bet you’ve already thought of that.”

“Sam isn’t responding to us either,” Gloria admitted.

Kelly shrugged. “Well, if there’s any justice left in this world, the two of them are dead. Guys who are willing to kill two teenage girls over money deserve to rot in hell.”

Pen put back to paper, Gloria felt herself shift back into her detective mindset. “Are you saying that Ray killed Suzie?”

“No,” Kelly answered sharply. “Sam did. The whole thing was his idea.” A shadow passed over her face. “I didn’t like it, but I was scared and I trusted him. More than Suzie, who I didn’t even know that well.”

Gloria halted.

“I thought you weren’t going to lie anymore, Kelly.”

Looking genuinely confused for the first time since Gloria had met her, Kelly doubled down. “I’m not. Sam said we didn’t need Suzie, that she was going to ruin everything and if I got her down to Stoner Beach, he’d take care of it.” She winced. “Though I did help get rid of the body.”

Ignoring that last sentence, Gloria pressed onward. “I was talking about the part where you didn’t know her before all of this.”

“I didn’t.” Kelly gave her a dull look. “I mean, I knew who she was and hurled insults at her every so often, but I wouldn’t call that a relationship.”

Gloria shook her head.

“Sam Lombardo keeps records of all the students he counsels. The one he has on you says there was a violent altercation with a girl you were…sexually involved with. The girl being Suzie Toller.”

Kelly paled and fell silent. A few weighted seconds passed before she spoke again.

“Marci North,” she whispered.

Now it was Gloria’s turn to be confused.

“I’m sorry?”

“Marci North,” Kelly said, louder, an undefinable emotion in the back of her voice. “That was the girl I was ‘sexually involved with.’ God, he would write something like that.”

“I’m sorry, but who-“

“And there was never any ‘violent altercation’ between us, that asshole completely made-“

“Kelly,” Gloria interjected as calmly as she could. “Who is Marci North?”

“Proof that I was a huge fucking dyke and an absolute freak who needed help.” The words came out her like she’d been chewing glass.

It took a moment for Gloria to get her bearings. “She was a classmate?”

Kelly nodded. “We met over the summer, at the Yacht Club. She was new to Blue Bay, but it was alright ‘cause her parents were obviously loaded. Real nerdy type, always carrying a book around with her and spouting off random facts about whatever bullshit she was studying that week.” Kelly shrugged. “It didn’t matter to me, I just liked hearing her talk, you know?”

Gloria was still stunned, trying very hard to bury it in her scribbling. She looked up and caught a hint of wistfulness in Kelly’s face.

“I thought I was in love with her. It had to be, I just felt so good around her. All the time. Like I was always at the top of the pyramid, the whole world at my feet.” Kelly pursed her lips. “All that lesbian stuff was wrong, of course, but it wasn’t like that with Marci, we weren’t butch or bra-burners or whatever. I just thought it was love and if we kept it quiet we could…leave Blue Bay and be together.” She heaved in a breath and her face shuttered

“I was wrong, of course.”

The pen in Gloria’s hand stopped.

“Mr. Lombardo said that I was just ‘confused’ and it would only get worse the more time I spent with Marci.” Kelly’s voice turned bitter. “She was comforting me through daddy’s suicide and that was ‘unhealthy’ according to him. And if it was going to continue, he’d have no choice, but to tell my mom.”

To Gloria’s shock, she saw Kelly’s eyes had filled with tears.

“Do you know what would happen if Sandra Van Ryan found out her daughter was a dyke?”

In a blink, all trace of the tears were gone.

 “So I ended it and it wasn’t soon after when Mr. Lombardo…Sam offered himself and the drugs as a way to help me get over all my ‘problems.’” She shrugged. “It was weird at first, but I…liked it and he made me feel safe. I didn’t have to think or make decisions when I was with him, he just took care of me. It was what I thought freedom felt like.”

She sighed and looked out to that unseen point behind Gloria, somewhere that was probably as far from Blue Bay as Kelly could imagine.

“It wasn’t about the money. Not by itself. I just wanted to leave and I was tired of waiting for anyone’s permission. Sam’s plan was as good as any, just had the added bonus of pissing my mother off and destroying my reputation here. And I really did think he would protect me, keep looking after me, no matter how fucked up it got. I figured it’d all be with it.”

Kelly brought her gaze back to Gloria’s, the haunted look on her face one of finality.

“Whatever prison I end up in won’t be any worse than the one my mother’s kept me in my whole life.”

Gloria paused, but before she could say anything there was a soft knock on the door and a nurse came bustling in, a harried Sandra Van Ryan not far behind.

“You’ve had more than enough time to interrogate my daughter,” she snapped at Gloria before turning towards Kelly with a softened look. “Now she needs to rest.”

The smile on Gloria’s face was brittle.

“Don’t worry Mrs. Van Ryan, I think I got everything I need. It’ll probably be a while before you hear from us again.”

Sandra merely sniffed in response before hurrying to Kelly’s bedside.

As Gloria was leaving, she took one last look at the girl known as Kelly Van Ryan, stripped of every veneer her wealth and privilege had gifted to her and saw a small, lonely little girl wearing a blank face that was turned away from the only person she was unfortunate enough to be left with.

A dark thought had Gloria wondering if this was a fate worse than death, for her, but she shook it away and left, hoping she wouldn’t have to be back so soon.

Slowly walking down the depressingly white halls of the hospital, mulling over everything she’d heard, Gloria tried to make sense of everything she now knew, trying to make all the pieces fit into a complete picture.

It was all still a mess, too many unknowns for the picture to be anything but a muddied watercolor. The more she learned, the less she seemed to know.

But there was one thing she knew for sure: she was going to burn Sam Lombardo’s file on Kelly Van Ryan as soon as possible.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not really intending this to frame Kelly as a hapless victim, more as a girl manipulated by the people around her that result in her having no life or agency to speak of. And I liked putting her opposite Perez, who is the only truly neutral character in the whole mess. I fully believe Sam would've doctored his student files to help frame Kelly; he may have regretted her death but he was totally ok with her taking the rap for everything that went down. It was fun to dig into this movie and poke at some of the misogyny rooted in the treatment of its characters (nothing I love more than improving the writing for one-note female characters).
> 
> FYI, if you've seen the original 1992 Poison Ivy film, I kind of based Marci off of Sara Gilbert's character, except waaaaaay nerdier.


End file.
